Sir Nigel John Thrift, (born 12 October 1949 in Bath) is a British academic and geographer.
In 2016 he became Executive Director of the Schwarzman Scholars, an international leadership program at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
He is the former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Warwick, having served in the position from 2006 to 2016, and a leading academic in the field of human geography.